More Brazilians believe in the importance of vaccines than in the validity of so-called alternative therapies, and almost 90 percent of the adult population accepts—at least in part— the fact that climate change is real and caused by human activity. Nevertheless, almost half of Brazilian adults reject one of the fundamental principles of the theory of evolution: humans and other primates descend from a common ancestor. Moreover, almost 40 percent of the country’s adult population believes the government hides information about beings from other planets.
The survey evaluated the degree of agreement of respondents with a series of statements that either reflect scientific consensus or pseudoscientific beliefs.
These are some of the results of a national survey on public understanding of science conducted by the Datafolha Institute, a respected polling organization, on behalf of Instituto Questão de Ciência (IQC, Question of Science Institute), where we are both founders and directors. More than 2,000 Brazilians aged sixteen and over were surveyed in March 2019 in 130 municipalities in all parts of the country. The margin of error of the results is plus or minus two percentage points.